Sting against One Nation duo raises more questions
YES, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation looks shonky after two officials were secretly filmed talking of the millions they wanted to get from the US gun lobby.
But wait – don’t trust the politicians and journalists beating this up, either.
For instance, the following headlines about the covert filming by Qatar’s Al Jazeera network of One Nation’s disastrous trip to meet America’s National Rifle Association are false.
“One Nation Secretly Filmed Asking NRA For Funding”.
“One Nation’s James Ashby filmed seeking $20m from NRA to weaken Australia’s gun laws”.
Likewise, this statement from Prime Minister Scott Morrison is false: “One Nation officials have basically sought to sell Australia’s gun laws to the highest bidders, to a foreign buyer.”
And this statement from Labor leader Bill Shorten is not only false, but self-serving: “Shocking video footage of One Nation operatives … conspiring with the National Rifle Association to raise money to undermine Australia’s gun laws – I think that is shocking. This is now a test of Mr Morrison’s leadership … will he put One Nation last?”
So what is the truth here? Yes, two One Nation officials – Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff, James Ashby and Queensland leader Steve Dickson – acted like fools.
Both were duped by an Al Jazeera reporter, Rodger Muller, who for three years posed as a gun lobbyist and persuaded the duo to go with him to meet the NRA.
They agreed, because Dickson is a defender of shooters’ rights and Ashby wanted to learn from the NRA’s sophisticated campaigning techniques.
Little did they know that Muller was filming them for Al Jazeera, but what did the footage actually show?
We see Ashby and Dickson in a car, coaxed by Muller, discussing the difference a donation of $10 million or $20 million would make to cash-strapped One Nation.
Boozing in a pub with Muller and his assistant on their first night in the US, Ashby and Dickson say that kind of money could win One Nation up to eight Senate seats and they’d have the government by its testicles.
Ashby adds about his coming visit to the NRA: “I’d love to get my hands on their software … (and) if they can help us with donations, super”.
But in their filmed meeting with NRA officials, neither Ashby nor Dickson is seen asking for any donation. Nor did they get one.
The talk is entirely about campaigning techniques, distasteful though that is to people who loathe guns.
Nor are the men filmed offering to weaken our gun laws.
But these One Nation officials did cross a line when they met representatives of the billionaire Koch brothers, donors to libertarian, free market and Republican causes. Dickson was filmed asking for money: “Whatever you do would be fantastic … We can change the voting system in our country, the way people operate, if we’ve got the money to do it.”
Asking US donors to influence an Australia election is morally wrong, although not illegal at the time. Only weeks later did our parliament, with Hanson’s support, ban big foreign donations.
The one saving grace here is that the Koch brothers don’t donate to the gun lobby.
Still, the video is very damaging to One Nation, but look at the hypocrites who’ve jumped on it. How is Dickson’s failed pitch worse than Labor and the Liberals accepting millions of dollars not from American libertarians but from companies linked to China’s communist regime?
And don’t think Labor’s attack on One Nation is all about principle. Labor wants to demonise One Nation so it can shame the Liberals out of making any deal with Hanson to swap preferences – a deal the Liberals desperately need to save Queensland seats.
There’s more hypocrisy here. Many of the critics now hyperventilating about One Nation and foreign donors say nothing about the Left-wing GetUp! accepting some $100,000 a year in foreign donations.
Nor do they ask why Al Jazeera, owned by the government of Muslim Qatar, spent an astonishing three years to create this sting.
It paid Rodger Muller and his assistant to pose as gun nuts for all that time and even to run a fake gun lobby group, before deceitfully and secretly filming Ashby and Dickson to destroy an Australian political party seen as hostile to Muslim immigration.
Who else would go to that huge effort and expense and for what purpose, given One Nation broke no law? Doesn’t that smell like foreign interference, too?